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Old 04-16-2012, 01:13 PM   #22
MidnightCafe
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Default Re: Am I the only one totally curriculum shopping yet?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Marzipan View Post
I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Sonlight B+C. That is what I was going to do this year. What didn't you like about it? What did you replace/skip?
Well, it's kind of ridiculous...and a bit of a story, but I'll try to keep it brief & you can ask questions if you want!

We used Five in a Row (FIAR) for K-3. In 3rd grade we fizzled out a bit, and most of our weeks centered around Story of the World (SOTW), rather than FIAR. So, for 4th grade, I decided I was ready to make history w/living books the core of our curriculum, rather than FIAR. So, I purchased the Instructor's Guide (IG) for Sonlight B/C. I bought all the other materials used or borrowed from the library.

Briefly, Sonlight's IG for B/C has a schedule, which includes Bible readings & memorization, history readings, Read-Aloud schedule, poetry readings, readings from Usborne's history encyclopedia, readings from a book called Window on the World, selections from a geography songs CD, and readings from Aesop's Fables. I purchased the readers schedule separately. You can do this so that you can choose books according to your child's reading level.

So, from that list of included items, here's what I did:

- Bible readings...We kept pace with these until I decided I'd rather follow the Torah portions for the week.

- Bible Memorization - We've done some, but not all of this.

- History reading from A Child's History of the World - A month or two into the school year, I decided that I really preferred SOTW to the children's history book used by Sonlight. So, I replaced their history readings with SOTW.

- Usborne Encyclopedia - We coordinate our pages with SOTW instead.

- Read-Alouds - The first, most disappointing, thing that I discovered regarding Sonlight B/C, is that for this core, the Read-Alouds do NOT coordinate with the history core. It is my understanding that for the other cores (or maybe it's just for the older grades) the Read-Alouds and the Readers are somewhat coordinated with the history curriculum. HOWEVER, we LOVE the read-alouds, and I think Mane is learning a lot from them. She's learning about places and people and times in history...just not in sync with the history curriculum. So, we've followed the read-aloud schedule (minus a few books I could not find & did not want to order from Sonlight).

- Poetry Readings - We have our own poetry books that we read from. I don't like Sonlight's choice. BUT, having a schedule that tells me to read poetry encourages me to read poetry!!

- Window on the World - I looked at this book at a homeschool book sale and decided against it. It just isn't my favorite.

- Geography Songs - I'd probably like this. I just didn't purchase it.

- Aesop's Fables - No throwing tomatoes, but I think Aesop's Fables are weird. We read some & then moved on to other things.

Ok, so it looks like I don't used the IG at all, right?! The thing is, I'm a big fan of the Read-Alouds, and I think it might be worth buying the IG just to have a schedule for reading, along with their comprehension questions & suggested map & timeline activities (included in the IG). At the beginning of the school year, the IG schedule really prompted me to stay on track with Bible reading, memorization, history and poetry reading, too...even though we were using different materials. Now, I feel like I've got the rhythm, and I don't use the schedule as much. The schedule also has places to fill in things like Math, Language Arts & Science assignments for the week. Of course, I could draw up my own weekly schedule, but there was something about having it premade that made me really use a schedule this year!

I'm considering using Sonlight again, but I want a core with history, read-alouds & readers all integrated. I might hold off a year so that we can finish our first round of Story of the World first. I haven't decided yet.
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